The concept of regionalism

Since the founding of the regional concept in Micronesia two decades ago, we’ve heard bureaucrats and politicians speak of the essence of regionalism between Mili, Tobi and the Taga Stone famous isles of the Northern Marianas.

Those who have taken the lead promoting this concept meant well. Their thunderous voices have been heard in every corner of the Micronesian region. We acknowledge these well intended statements with a full round of applause, but later realized that the message gradually faded into the acoustics of meeting venues.

What must have muted these well meaning statements from Micronesia’s bureaucrats and politicians?

Recently, regional organizations discussed the need for a regional airline. Do they mean a regional air-carrier within the context of every island government pitching-in equally in fees to ensure air-service daily even if passenger volume makes it unprofitable? Or do they mean a regional airline much like the current arrangement run as a business entity?

The basic fallacy in the former is the financial drain such a concept would impose on financially strapped island governments now struggling to make ends meet. Have regionalist really delve into the cost of such a grand plan and would the individual fees to defray the cost of such concept an affordable amount?

Over the years, we’ve gotten accustomed to problem solving of economic issues with political solutions. This well earned legacy from the US Department of Interior must go. It’s time to change this unworkable approach. We must begin addressing and resolving mutual economic issues with real economists veering from the old US Department of Interior failed paradigms.

Therefore, it behooves bureaucrats and politicians to realign their visions and paradigms of what can work in consonance with our louder than thunder aspirations for a self-supporting regional airline. It is our view that the problem isn’t so much the current regional airline as much as our individual and collective inability to get our acts together to compete with other destinations in nearby Japan and Asia who also offer the triad of the sea, sun and shore.

This and other mutual regional concerns need to be reviewed by economists, financial and investment experts and not by bureaucrats and politicians who have yet to come to grips with the basic premise that government is never in the business of profit making. The business sector has that role from A-Z. An understanding of this 30-year-old fallacy ought to put more meaning and relevance into discussion of substantive regional issues with the view to embracing new paradigms. Si Yuus Maase`!